This invention relates generally to social networking, and in particular to providing a news ticker of actions taken by users within a social networking system.
Social networking systems commonly provide mechanisms allowing users to interact with each other and with other social networking system objects within the social networking systems. A social networking system user may be an individual or any other entity, such as a business or other non-person entity. Social networking system information that is tracked and maintained by a social networking system may be stored as a social graph, which includes a plurality of nodes that are interconnected by a plurality of edges. A social graph node represents a social networking system object that can act on and/or be acted upon by another node. A social networking system object may be, for example, a social networking system user, non-person entities, content items, groups, social networking system pages, events, messages, concepts, or other social networking system objects, such as movies, bands, or books.
An edge between nodes in a social graph represents a particular kind of connection between the nodes, which may result from an action that was performed by one of the nodes on the other node. Examples of such actions by a social networking system user include listing social networking system objects in a user profile, creating or uploading content items to the social networking system, subscribing to or joining a social networking system group or fan page, sending a message to another social networking system user, making a purchase associated with a social networking system node, commenting on a content item, or RSVP'ing to an event. Thus, if a first user establishes a connection with a second user in the social networking system, the users may be represented by nodes, and the connection may be represented by an edge connecting the nodes. Further, if the first user sends a message to the second user or tags the second user in a picture stored by the social networking system, the message and tagging may be represented by additional edges between the nodes. Alternatively, the message and picture may be represented by nodes, which are connected by edges to the nodes representing the first and second user. A social graph, therefore, may be used to track the interactions between social networking system objects.
Social networking systems also commonly provide mechanisms displaying the interactions of other users in the social networking systems, referred to herein as “news stories” or simply “stories.” Stories may be displayed in a social networking system graphical user interface (GUI) that displays the acting user, the action taken by the acting user, and the object acted upon by the acting user. For instance, if a user named Meredith uploads a photograph of her cat, the social networking system GUI may display the photograph in conjunction with the text “Meredith posted an image” and an image of Meredith. In this example, the acting user is Meredith, the action taken by Meredith is the uploading of the photo, and the object acted upon by Meredith is the photo. Likewise, if a user named Molly comments on the photograph, the social networking system GUI may display the full text of the comment below the photograph along with the text “Molly comments:” and an image of Molly. Additional information may be displayed in conjunction with a story. For example, if a story is about a user's RSVP to an event, details of the event may be displayed. Likewise, if a story is about a user's comment on a video, the video may be displayed.
Social networking systems may display an ordered plurality of stories within a portion of the social networking system GUI dedicated to the display of social networking system stories, referred to herein as a “newsfeed.” Social networking systems often order stories according to an algorithmically-determined relevance to a viewing user, prioritizing the most relevant stories in a newsfeed (stories that the viewing user is likely to be interested in viewing), and preventing stories below a relevance threshold from being displayed. Algorithms are imperfect means of determining relevance, however, and thus certain stories that a viewing user would otherwise want to view are mistakenly determined to be too irrelevant to display in the newsfeed. Note that stories displayed in a newsfeed may be referred to herein as “feed stories.”
Displaying all stories related to a viewing user (actions by users associated with the viewing user) in a newsfeed chronologically ensures that all relevant stories are displayed to a viewing user but is an impractical option, as typically only a subset of the stories related to a viewing user are relevant to the viewing user. In such cases, a viewing user may become frustrated by navigating all stories related to the viewing user in order to find stories of the most interest to the viewing user. Further, newsfeeds are static and require manual refreshing to display the most recent stories. In addition, newsfeeds are typically displayed in a dedicated social networking system page, and are not viewable when a user is viewing a different part of the social networking system. Finally, the amount of information displayed in conjunction with stories often increases the amount of social networking system GUI space required to display the story, resulting in a greater amount of content that a viewing user is required to navigate and increasing the amount of time a viewing user is required to spend searching for relevant stories.